


Mercury Sulfide

by ajwolf, MooseFeels



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (a bing if you will), Action, Alternate Universe, Dancing, Desert, LLYBB, M/M, Mini Bang, a little light kidnapping, some mild subterfuge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 08:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajwolf/pseuds/ajwolf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: They meet dancing. Viktor doesn't realize this has been planned.(minibang prompt-- "action" and "fumes")





	Mercury Sulfide

**Author's Note:**

> wonderful beautiful lovely art provided by Pikka (pikkart.tumblr.com), written in conjuction with ajwolf

The first thing Viktor thinks, pulling him into his arms, is that he’s  _ beautiful _ . 

His cheeks are round and flushed slightly, and there’s a sheen of sweat across his brow, down his neck, to the joining of his chest and throat. He smiles, looking at Viktor, his brown eyes clear and bright and friendly.

“Dance with me,” he says, his voice breathless.

Viktor nods-- how could he say no?

The stranger pulls him away from the bartop and to the dance floor. It’s crowded-- the band is playing something admirably bawdy and fun. The stranger must be from here, or he must have spent a lot of time here, because there’s an ease to the way he turns and twists across the baked tiles of the dance floor. There’s something  _ known _ about how he brings Viktor along. 

The band shifts, though, and the music picks up even more. 

The stranger grins brightly. Raises his fingers in a mockery of a bull’s horns and fixes Viktor with such a  _ look _ . A beautiful, strange, incredulous sort of one.

Viktor remembers laughing. He remembers the beauty. 

He remembers the press of his body against him, he remembers the damp pressure of his breath against his skin, he remembers how his shone under the low light of the tavern; he remembers how he  _ glistened _ despite the heavy, dry air of the desert.

Viktor remembers these things, and then he wakes up in an oxcart with his tongue glued to the bottom of his mouth and a  _ dry _ , gritty sort of taste in his mouth.

“You’re up!” Someone shouts, and Viktor squints into the bright desert light. It’s early; it must be. Already, it is too warm (too warm by  _ far _ for Viktor’s nausea) but it’s not yet the baking, cruel heat that the desert is at midday. 

Viktor sits up, in the cart, or he tries to, but his hands are tied behind his back. 

Someone on horseback rides up to him.

Brown eyes. Friendly. Sparkling with mischief.

“We thought maybe you wouldn’t be  _ too _ dearly missed,” he says. His expression is bright and playful. “At least, not for a little while.”

His clothes are loose on him, covering him from his neck to his feet with a drape of material over his head -- a far cry from what he wore last night. Material to wear in the high desert-- sun protection.  He doesn’t just look  _ of _ here he looks--

“You’re trying to destroy the factory,” Viktor moans. 

The  _ rebel _ grins and rides forward. Viktor groans tries to keep himself from vomiting.

* * *

 

* * *

 

Hasetsu is a small world, and it floats in the twisted arm of a star-dense galaxy, surrounded by a remarkable number of sun-- three of them, in a triplicate orbit that swings and bobs in a strange sort of pattern.  The wintered oceans of its sister world are visible with the naked eye from its shifting dunes, it’s wind torn towns, it’s dark and deep and dangerous mines. Hasetsu is a desert world, but it is known, galactically, for the frozen oceans of sapphires and cobalt lurking in the solid rock of its deepest mines. Hasetsu is a desert world; there is a bitter and strange irony that it is known for a depth of blues to rival the fish-rich oceans of its sister sphere.

Yuuri has lived here his whole life, like his sister, like his mother, like his father, like his grandparents before him and his ancestors before that.  The sand of the high desert is a  _ part _ of Yuuri, as much as the wavering sunlight of midday and the impossible coldness of sundown. Yuuri and all his family and all his friends are inextricable from this place, strange as it is.

Still, he doesn’t remember a time before it was owned by the Nikiforov family. 

He doesn’t remember a Hasetsu that owns itself, its riches owned and traded and manipulated by the people who toil in the depths of its mines, who populate its cities, who know best the ways to cross its endless seas of sand. 

Yuuri doesn’t remember; no one does. But he does dare  _ imagine _ , and it turns out that imagining like that is enough to pull together something the colonial capital is calling a  _ rebellion _ . 

For a little under a standard year (so much shorter than a real year-- than a solar year), they have been robbing supply trains and rigging unoccupied warehouses to explode. The point is not blood-- the point is to make it  _ just _ expensive enough to revert Hasetsu back to control of itself. The sapphires and cobalt make excellent conductors, but they cannot be so valuable that house Nikiforov is interested in replaced ornithopters and grain regularly. 

It’s been risky, but tonight, well--

There is one Nikiforov son, and they intend to make his ransom dear. 

Yuuri holds the slender vial of deep red poison in his hands. He looks at it, before looking up, at Phichit.

“You’re sure it won’t hurt him?” Yuuri asks.

Phichit nods. “If it kills him, it kills you too,” he answers. 

Yuuri nods. He’s not sure he could live with being a murderer anyway.

He slides the red poison onto his lips, shakes his shoulders, and heads out there to dance. 

The Nikiforov son is beautiful. It makes it easy enough to pretend, to pretend to be drunk and overly confident and fascinated and swayed by him. It makes it easy for Yuuri to pull him onto the floor, to pull him close to him, to leave a lurid stain of poison on the column of his neck, at his pulse point, where his heartbeat will make it heat and soak into his skin.

Yuuri makes it off the floor first, and Phichit pulls him into his arms, through the bar, to their waiting cart. He tosses Yuuri a canteen of cold water, enough to help with the inevitable dehydration he’ll experience when it fades out of his own system.

“Did it work?” Yuuri remembers slurring.

Phichit nods, before Yuuri slips to unconsciousness.

Yuuri wakes up well before dawn, all at once. 

“Thank the stars,” Phichit says, handing Yuuri a canteen.

Yuuri swallows the cool water eagerly and closes his eyes, thankful that the air is still cold and sharp.

He looks over.

Nikiforov is laying facedown in the cart, his hands bound behind him. He snores loudly. His silvery hair is a mess. 

Yuuri looks up. Phichit is on his horses, trotting alongside the cart. 

“We did it,” Yuuri says. 

Phichit nods.

Yuuri pulls his loose cloak over his shoulders and head. Steps off the cart to climb onto his horse, being led by Phichit. 

“They’re waiting,” Yuuri says. 

Phichit nods again.

They press on. 


End file.
